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Religion

2009-05-01 11:45:00

Are we supposed to look like God?

Question: We are said to have been made in the image and likeness of God. Does this mean that, if we were to see God, he would resemble a human being? Or, does it mean our immortal soul is in his image and likeness?

Answer: In the very first chapter of the first book of the Bible we read: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). The conclusion of your question is correct, but requires explanation. Throughout this article the reader should understand that I include woman in the term “man.” Of all visible creatures only man is able to know and love his creator. He alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in God’s own life. That is the purpose for which God created us, and this is the fundamental reason for man’s dignity. Being in the image of God, the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. Each man is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession, and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. In creating man, God endowed him with an intellect and free-will. Those qualities are an extension of God’s own being. There is only one God, existing from all eternity. But somehow in that one God there are three distinct persons, which we call the Trinity. God the Son proceeds from God the Father by way of an intellectual activity, the expression of God’s Wisdom. God the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father by way of the freely-willed mutual Love of the Father and Son, which Love is the Holy Spirit. God created everything for man, who is more precious in the eyes of God than all other creatures. For man the heavens and the earth, the sea and all the rest of creation exist. God attached so much important to man’s salvation, that he sent his own Son to assume human nature for the sake of man. This Son, retaining his divine personality, became the man Jesus, who assumed a human body and a human soul: two natures in one person. Here is a profound mystery of faith. The human person, created in the image of God, is at once both corporeal and spiritual. The Bible expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that “the Lord God formed man out of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being” (Gen 2:7). In Holy Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person. But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signified the spiritual principle in man. The human body shares in the dignity of the image of God: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul. Man, composed of body and soul, is a unity. Through his bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through man all material things are brought to their highest perfection, and are able to give praise to God. For this reason man must not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good, and to hold it in honor: because God created it and will raise it up with its soul on the last day. The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God: it is not produced by the parents. And the soul is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death. And both soul and body will be reunited in the final Resurrection at the end of the world. Your first question poses a curious but interesting inquiry: If we were to see God, would He resemble a human being? We don’t know and cannot even imagine what God looks like. He is all-perfect and contains all beauty and knowledge and goodness, and dwells in unapproachable light. After our death God will allow us to see him, according to our human condition, face-to-face. But St. John, the beloved apostle, tells us: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, ever at the Father’s side, who has revealed him” (John 1:17). After death, those persons, who go to heaven (the saints) see God in the Beatific Vision forever, and their happiness is full and complete. Those persons, who are damned, receive at their judgment a brief glimpse of the glory of God, and then are cut off from that sight as they enter into the everlasting punishment of hell, where their greatest suffering is the realization that they are deprived forever of such beauty and goodness, and that they lost it through their own fault.